Amazon Blocks Arch Linux Handbook Author From Releasing Kindle Version

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard the horror stories of Amazon swindling the user out of their content on the Kindle, but this time they've managed to do it preemptively: by blocking the GFDL licensed Arch Linux Handbook from the Kindle Store." Reasons include: "We’ve reviewed the information you provided and have decided to block these books from being sold in the Kindle Store. The books closely match content that is freely available on the web and we are not confident that you hold exclusive publishing rights. This type of content can create a poor customer experience, and is not accepted. As a result, we have blocked the books listed below from being sold in the Kindle Store." The workaround: he uploaded a mobi copy to the Arch website.

Comments

Good - Trying to block spam

[ZombieBraintrust]

There is all kinds of spam in these bookstores. People go out and grab open licenced content and then package it as an ebook and try to sell it for $0.99 You wind up with 20 ebooks for The Tale of Two Cities listed in catagories like romance or science fiction. Makes the new release section a joke. On B&N there was once a problem where a publisher was selling machine generated books sourced from wikipedia.

Re:Not unreasonable.

[pushing-robot]

Agreed. Not that long ago I was reading (on Slashdot) about the scourge of 'authors' that do nothing but spam the Kindle store with content they trawl from the web, and how Amazon desperately needed to crack down. Damned if you do...